NORCECA President Mr Cristobal Marte Hoffiz presented the confederation's development plan based on education and opportunities to compete

Cagliari, Italy, October 30, 2014 – The continental confederations presented their development plans for the years ahead at the FIVB Congress Workshop held in Cagliari, Italy on Thursday.

NORCECA President Mr Cristobal Marte Hoffiz sees a bright future for the confederation as a result of a development programme started in 2008 based on three pillars: structure, instruction and competition.

African Confederation President Dr. Amr Elwani presented the “African Dream” development programme and praised the development of sub-Saharan athletes, even predicting a world championship title for an African nation after 2018.

Mr Tulio Texeira, from the South American Confederation, emphasised the efforts the organisation is making to spread the sport via courses of Mini-Volley in a serious push to attract the young generation to volleyball and beach volleyball.

All took part in the one-day workshop for National Federations category I and II held on Thursday on the occasion of the 34th FIVB World Congress to take place on Friday and Saturday.

Mr Marte Hoffiz, who is also First Executive Vice President of the FIVB, presented a full report of NORCECA activities, including all the competitions held in 2014 in the different zones within the confederation.

“First of all we must have a well organised national federation as well as good zonal associations within the continental confederation,” Mr Marte Hoffiz explained. “Then you must promote education, with proper seminars directed at players, coaches, referees and managers and, finally, give the countries the opportunity to compete at all levels.”

He thanked FIVB President Dr. Ary S. Graça F° for his support and also said how proud he is when Dr. Graça speaks of NORCECA as a role model for the rest of the world.

“We have an annual beach volleyball tour and our volleyball teams take part in all FIVB competitions at all levels and last year we organised 41 volleyball tournaments and 14 beach volleyball events,” he said.

“Now we have seven instructors travelling around our countries and staying for one-month periods to help the preparation of national teams,” he added.

Mr Marte Hoffiz pointed out the case of St Lucia, a tiny island in the Caribbean whose girl’s team qualified to the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games.

“Now we are going to have 38 countries participating in the Continental Cup towards the Rio de Janeiro Games,” Mr Marte Hoffiz added.

He then introduced Mr Brian Louisy, president of the St Lucia Volleyball Federation, who explained their expansion plan for volleyball and beach volleyball based on the support they are receiving from NORCECA, FIVB, government, private enterprises as well as volunteers and parents.

“We started working with secondary school students, but next year we are going to expand our programme to the primary schools as a way to attract children to our sport,” Mr Louisy said.

He also said the qualification of the girl’s team to Nanjing helped to argue his case for beach volleyball to be included in the programme of the 2017 Commonwealth Games to be held in St Lucia.

“We are getting fantastic support and the girls have served as inspiration to the young generation so their participation in Nanjing has been extremely valuable,” Mr Louisy commented.

Dr. Elwani said Africa “is stepping into a new platform after initiating our programme twelve years ago with the first move to promote the game in our countries.”

“Our vision is to spread volleyball in Africa and become a major power in the near future as we have a lot of people in sub Sahara with physical tools and natural abilities to play volleyball,” he said.

“We have the mission to scientifically detect players with the goal of creating talent centres involving the Olympic Committees, and ministers of Sports and Education in the project,” Dr. Elwani added.

Dr. Elwani also said that the CAVB's plans include organising an African Nations Youth Tournament in 2017 in order to be ready to take a quality jump in 2018 at the senior level.

“We have a common development fund programme and need the finance and budgeting to achieve our goals,” he said. “FIVB is contributing to our plan extensively with the support and enthusiasm of its president.”

Mr Texeira said the South American Confederation is penetrating in countries like Bolivia, Uruguay, Venezuela and Guyana and praised the work done by the development centres established in Argentina and Venezuela.

“We are in favour of working with the young generation of players and really appreciate the support by FIVB and the efforts by our president Dr. Rafael Lloreda to expand volleyball and beach volleyball in our region,” he said.